Saturday, January 28, 2012

He asks what has brought about the collapse of more than two hundred years of a Christian moral consensus and gives five reasons:

Conservative Americans have for decades been more concerned with politics and economics rather than with defending fundamental moral values.

From the 1960s onwards the entertainment media, rather than family, school, parish or church, became the arbiter and shaper of public views and attitudes.

The courts and the legal system have gradually reflected the views of the new liberal and secular electorate.

Conservatives tend to comply with the law rather than rebel against it; they obey rather than protest.

Finally, Voris notes, Christians of all denominations have gradually abandoned traditional moral teaching. Contraception has become completely acceptable in the Protestant churches and in the Catholic Church her wise warning about the separation of sex from procreation has been largely ignored by the Catholic faithful. In America we now see the result; what Christians chose to regard simply and casually as a matter of individual choice is now, in the workplace and in the relationship between employer and employee, being forced on them by law.

All this reminds one of an obvious truth: if we are not permanently vigilant in defence of our fundamental beliefs, they will be swept away from under our feet.

You are free to decide where and with whom you stand. You do not, however, have the right to try to change the Catholic Church to suit your opinions or wishes. No matter how brilliant you are, you are not above the Magisterium. No matter how persuasive the political position, you cannot ignore the law of the Church and the Natural Law. Doctrine and Orthodoxy may be distasteful words in this age of personal freedoms, but if you call yourself Catholic, you need to know what Catholic doctrine actually says and follow it.